Religious Utah MORMON father charged with TORTURE and child abuse for taking his little kids on a way-too-hard hike:
https://archive.is/lPaquthe trail in question where he was found with his 8 year old daughter, and 2 and 4 year old son:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/utah/broads-fork-trailIt's 2000 ft of elevation gain over 2.2~ mi each way so pretty steep.
Initially, some news reports hailed the rescue and the father’s efforts to keep the children alive in unforgiving conditions. There was even a GoFundMe fund-raiser, where Mr. Smith was said to have suffered frostbite in trying to keep the children safe, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Two of the children were in critical condition after they were found, the sheriff’s office said after the rescue, and one was in stable condition. Mr. Smith was in fair condition, the statement said.
District Attorney Sim Gill of Salt Lake City said during a news conference that the children were told to “march on” despite being afraid and that the path Mr. Smith took, known as the Broad Fork Trail, was “not an easy hike that you would take a child upon.”
Mr. Gill also said that the children discussed climbing over “rocks that were slipping” and having to hold onto vegetation as they were trying to hike.
The 8-year-old girl was found “alongside a boulder with ‘a few sticks stacked against it,’” and the 2-year-old boy was under his 4-year-old brother, who was exposed and unconscious, according to the news report.
The news station also reported that Mr. Smith’s daughter can be heard in a video that was found on his phone asking, “Are we going to freeze to death, daddy?”
